(The Hosting News) – ThinkGrid, the leading platform provider enabling IT services from the cloud, today announced a distribution agreement with Infraserve Managed Services, which gives Australian resellers another option to offer a range of high-quality and flexible cloud computing services. Infraserve will add ThinkGrid to its portfolio of cloud services and provide resellers with the ability to further build out their recurring revenue and managed services offerings including Hosted Virtual Desktop and Virtual Server Infrastructure. Infraserve will work with VADIS Systems, ThinkGrid’s master distributor, to continue to grow the ThinkGrid base after its amazing success in the Australian cloud services market. As the first ever Australian distributor dedicated to only distributing cloud computing services, Infraserve is helping the channel to move quickly and realise the opportunity from cloud services without having to invest in the highly complex and costly IT infrastructures needed to deliver this new model of computing.

“Australia’s IT market is a fertile ground for cloud computing services. Firstly, as we come out of a global recession the economy is growing so quickly that demand for IT is outstripping supply by nearly 40%. This isn’t helped by the fact that there has been a serious drop in IT expertise in the country due to talent being attracted overseas to the US and Europe. In addition, Australia has some of the most geographically dispersed communities and businesses in the world,” said Roy Pater, Managing Director at Infraserve. “The cloud computing model, where IT services are delivered on a pay-per-use basis from off-premise, fully-managed data centres is a perfect fit for these market conditions. Resellers have a prime opportunity to capitalise on this trend, but they must move quickly to defend their business from other vendors such as the telcos and hosting companies who are moving rapidly into cloud computing.”

Resellers struggling to build their own cloud infrastructure or launch their managed services department can partner with Infraserve to offer these cloud services from ThinkGrid’s enterprise-class cloud platform, built across a series of tier 4 data centres that provide low latency, locally-based services. ThinkGrid and Infraserve provide a billing and provisioning platform, so that resellers can offer a fully scalable range of IT services such as Hosted Virtual Desktops, Exchange and Communications, VoIP, Software-as-a-Service, Virtual Server Infrastructure and Cloud Storage on a ‘pay monthly’ basis without long term onerous contracts. Resellers can offer these cloud services at relatively lower costs than traditional physical hardware and software whilst achieving much higher margins. When coupled with existing offerings such as consultancy, support and integration, resellers can use ThinkGrid to create highly-profitable and predictable recurring revenue streams with the minimum of investment compared to the cost of setting up, owning and managing an entire cloud platform.

According to Rob Lovell, CEO at ThinkGrid: “Businesses often underestimate the sheer scale of investment needed to build and run cloud computing infrastructures. Bringing together a range of technologies to create a highly-scalable cloud platform is difficult enough, let alone adding the billing and provisioning engine that ensures customers can flick a switch, scale up or down services and pay for them as needed. You’ve then got to employ the type of expertise that can make sure this vast infrastructure stays up and running 24/7, 365 days a year. Get any of this wrong and you’ll be out of the cloud business almost as soon as you’ve entered it. This is why we’re extremely pleased to be working with Infraserve to deliver a truly partner-centric model that helps resellers transform their business to meet the unique demands of cloud computing.”

In order to ensure the end-user experience of cloud services is of the highest standard, Infraserve aims to recruit a limited number of core resellers interested in selling cloud computing. These partners would subscribe to the InfraServe Reseller Partner Program. In return, resellers will be equipped with the necessary resources to effectively move customers to the cloud. These will include: training and education (assisting the channel to come to grips with managed services); lead generation; support services (if required); a provisioning and billing engine. The latter being a very important component of making the supply of cloud computing easy.

Pater concluded: “The current reseller model is being challenged by cloud computing. However, it’s not that dissimilar to the early days of the PC. One of the key growing pains experienced during that period was that resellers felt they needed to be a PC manufacturer or assembler to sell PCs. The channel quickly learned that this was not profitable and fraught with supply chain issues so went back to sourcing equipment from dedicated manufacturers who focussed on building good products. Subsequently, distributors took care of the supply chain and the channel focussed on their clients’ needs and built solutions for these. We can learn from history by applying the same logic to cloud computing. Let the dedicated providers develop and build out the core cloud offerings. Whilst the resellers do what they have been doing best for years and this is to understand and take care of their clients needs.”

About ThinkGrid ThinkGrid is a cloud computing vendor, providing an IT services platform from the Cloud. Launched with the aim of disrupting the way that businesses currently purchase and manage IT. ThinkGrid works with the IT partner channel to provide enterprise class IT to small and medium businesses over its worldwide network. ThinkGrid removes the management and cost burden of owning IT by offering it to customers as an on demand service. Its current services include Hosted Virtual Desktop, Exchange and Communications, Software-as-a-Service, Virtual Server Infrastructure and Cloud Storage. With ThinkGrid, each user is given their own personalised IT environment that operates in exactly the same way as a traditional computing environment. The difference is that with ThinkGrid’s Cloud Computing platform, it can be accessed from anywhere in the world through an Internet connection. ThinkGrid partners only pay for what they use, based on the needs of the business, and can scale up and down at the click of a mouse. For more information visit: http://www.thinkgrid.com/

About Infraserve InfraServe is a distributor, focussed on aggregating “pay per use” Cloud services via the Australian reseller channel. The core focus of the business is to find the right Cloud vendors whilst making the provision, use and sale of cloud services simple and within easy reach of the reseller channel. These services typically address the needs of small to medium enterprise organisations cloud computing needs. It is staffed by a passionate team that have a depth of experience in distribution and managed services. For more information visit: www.infraserve.com.au